


Flickering Ego

by MaddiePlease



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Abusive Parents, Anxiety, Depression, F/F, Lesbian Character, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23426011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaddiePlease/pseuds/MaddiePlease
Summary: There are thousands of Ethan Hills and I'm the worst one. The other ones are strong or smart or wealthy and I have nothing. There's no reality where I become like them, they'll always be filtered through my body. I'll keep trying to be like them, hoping I can find their happiness.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 17





	1. Victor

****

Victor

  


My mom would be so disappointed if she knew what I was about to go do. I don’t think she’d be mad, cuz she’d get it. She’d understand the motivation for why I was doing it, but I dunno, we just didn’t see eye to eye on solutions. We were crazy close in agreement on what was wrong with the city, the country, even the world, but we lost each other on the way to fix it.

She was among those that still thought change could come from within a broken system. I wasn’t sure yet what I could do on that grand global level, but I could give a system here a much deserved kick.

I took a long sip of the hot chocolate warming my hands and sighed, savoring this moment of normalcy as I made my way to a park in the center of Empire territory. One of the first things I did with my power was get rid of my chocolate allergy. Even though I’d had it almost every day since, the chocolate flavor was still exotic and new. It sucked that there was someone else out there who suddenly became allergic to it, but I decided early on that I couldn’t worry about alternate dimension bullshit. I couldn’t think about people choking on candy bars when I was the only me that mattered.

The closer I got to my destination, the less diverse things were. No more Indian or Chinese restaurants peaked out from the first floor of towers, replaced instead by stock standard coffee shops and cheesesteak joints. There wasn’t even a good bagel joint within five blocks, probably too Jewish for their blood to handle. Honestly, I was probably too Jewish for their blood. It was back a few generations, and I didn’t really practice, but it did make me pull my stolen coat a little tighter around my body.

As I shifted around to gain more warmth against the biting cold, my eyes were drawn to a mirror-like window next to me. Staring back I saw an ugly man with scars maring every part of his face, deep sunk eyes and greasy brown hair completed the look of “dirty homeless man”. It looked nothing like me, which was the goal, but I still felt something inside me reel back when I saw the person mimicking the actions I was. The only thing about me that was in line with the rest of this neighborhood was my pale skin which always made me nervous someone might see me as one of _them_.

“Hey, watch it!” a man nearly shouted into my ear as I walked into him. He shoved me with his shoulder nearly toppling me. “There are better places your type could be.” I heard him mumble as he walked away.

I shook my head and realized I was letting myself drift again. Into not just bad thoughts, but also into useless and confusing ones. Right now all I needed to focus on was my destination and my target. I needed to center myself in the now, the location and time. My phone was in some random dimension, I’d deal with it later.

\----

  


The wind billowed through the alleyway that I stood at the edge of. I couldn’t remember what the temperature was supposed to be today, all I knew was that it was freezing and this damn wind wasn’t helping. I leaned my shoulder up against the brick wall of the alley and stuck my hands into the long, singular pocket of the hoodie I had traded the coat out for, easier to move around in.

Mentally I did a bit of trading too. I made myself more detached and less worried about acts of violence in general. I had to be efficient, there would be time for guilt and shame later. Right now I needed to be a version of myself that could pull the metaphorical trigger.

Stifling a shiver, I looked out across the sidewalk and the street to a park that was nearly empty. I saw a jogger braving the cold, their breath fogged up the air in front of them and obscured their face slightly. It didn’t matter though, they were black, not the person I was looking for. A woman was walking what appeared to be a rottweiler through the grass, I lost focus on my task and watched as the dog sniffed its way out of my line of sight behind some bushes. The woman hesitated to watch the jogger run quite close to them, before the leash jerked and the woman disappeared out of sight as well.

For hours I stood there watching as similarly boring people doing similarly boring tasks walked through the park. The sun began to sink in the sky and the temperature began dropping to an even lower extreme. While I waited, I thought about how just a few days ago it had been much milder, but I hadn’t had the time until today to be standing here like this. It was like Brockton Bay itself was mocking me for attempting to do something good.

I was drawn from my dark thoughts about the weather and other uncontrollable phenomena, as a man in an expensive looking jacket walked into the park with their back to me. Bingo. I pushed off the wall and began walking towards the park. I swapped out for some knowledge of moving stealthily. Something of mine was lost in the transaction, but having lost it there was no memory to miss. Upon exiting the alley I walked along the sidewalk and around the city block the park took up, eventually entering from a different side than I had been viewing in the first place.

From this new angle I looked across the not-yet-green park for the man I had spotted. I began to feel anxious as I slowly realized that I couldn’t see him. Had I taken too long walking here? Was this the wrong park? The wrong man? I turned my attention within myself only to have a fist collide with the side of my head and bring me violently back to the present. The force of the blow had me stumbling, but I caught myself before I fell flat on the ground.

“I don’t know who you are or why you’re following me, but if you’re a cape you had best leave now.” It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it still did that I hadn’t fallen over from the force of the blow. Looking up I found the man I had been waiting for staring back at me with a controlled fury in his eyes.

“I waited all this time for you though, the least you could do is be polite,” I replied almost playfully. I felt a smirk pulling at the corners of my mouth. _I wonder which part of me this is?_ Something to think on when there wasn’t a homicidal superpowered nazi staring me down.

I don’t know what it was about what I’d said, but the man known as Victor seemed to relax ever so slightly. For a moment I thought there might be someone behind me and his relief was from having backup arrive, but then I realized it was something much simpler. I hadn’t raised my fists yet. They were still inside the pockets of my sweatshirt digging around for the vestiges of warmth that remained there. He wasn’t sure if I was actually a threat.

Victor lowered his guard and his fists slightly before speaking again. “If you’re attempting to get an ‘interview’ with my ‘people’ you’ve gone about it very—”

I ripped my hands out of my pockets before he could finish, whipping a police baton from seemingly nowhere in the same motion. Even if my power was lame, I’d rather that than be a fascist wannabe.

Using the small amount of surprise I had, I closed the distance between us and swung at his ribs. My power “enhanced” strength wasn’t much, but it was more than I’m sure he had been expecting from someone with my frame. Victor stumbled back a step before my field of vision suddenly shifted to the gray-blue sky of Brockton Bay. I felt my head crack against the ground, my vision dimmed for a moment before springing back to full clarity.

“You stay right there,” Victor said with a sort of finality as he leaned down to look at me while using his shins to keep my arms pinned. Shit, I wasn’t even sure what he did to me, but clearly I had underestimated him. I shifted a little left and right, testing the range of movement I had to work with. I tried lifting my good arm, the one before I got my power, but no luck. Physics wasn’t on my side here, even if I was stronger than him I had no leverage to work with from this position.

“I’ve got a new cape here.” During my struggling the nazi had pulled out a cellphone and was talking to someone. There were no introductions on my end so I had no idea who it was, standard protocol maybe for sudden calls like this. “He broke the rules, but he’s white and I’m not sure if he knows them.” I struggled a bit more as the conversation continued, hoping to catch him distracted but I had no such luck. Some part of me had the bright idea to try hacking a wad of spit into Victor’s face, but before I had even finished gathering the spit in my mouth I found a hand covering my lips.

“Understood, I’ll inform him.” Victor replied to the racist on the other end of the line as he hung up the quite out of date flip phone. “You have two options.” Victor stated, turning his attention back to me. I tried telling him to fuck off, but it just came out as a mumbled mess through his hand.

“Option one, you are a new cape and I stand up, leaving you to lay there until I am far away from you.” Essentially I give up, but I lose nothing except my pride. “Understand that this is a one time offer, _we_ do not do this.” He motioned to his face then mine. I was clearly supposed to be getting some type of deeper meaning from the emphasis he made.

“Option two, you are a new cape and I help you get up from there.” The implication was obvious with that one. “It’s clear you don’t understand how this works, I can give you...” I tuned him out.

While he continued his recruitment speech I delved into my power, sifting through the versions of me that came to the surface. Windows into other worlds and lives that I could have lived or might still live. I watched as an older Ethan Hill chopped vegetables for some kind of stew, a younger version of Ethan Hill practiced karate, and a college aged Ethan Hill studied for a physics exam. Tens of thousands of these possibilities laid out before me, but I only needed one. I grabbed ahold of the Ethan chopping vegetables, feeling my body shift, losing some of its muscles. In the next instant I swapped with him again, getting back the strength of the kickboxing version of me I had found the other day, but keeping the chef’s knife.

I wasn’t sure where Victor was in his speech when I brought my focus back to him, but when I flickered it brought him to a dead stop. By the time he was making to get off me the knife was already between his ribs. I swapped again, sending the knife back to the me I stole it from.

Victor stumbled up and backwards with a hiss and a yelp. I got up carefully and watched as he struggled to breathe and leaned back against a tree. I had definitely punctured a lung, but I had been aiming for his heart. Feeling the cold seeping in again, I hid my hands back inside my hoodie and faced Victor with a blank stare.

“They’ll come down on you.” the nazi struggled for breath before continuing, “You know that right?”

“No one’s gonna care that a superpowered white supremacist is dead,” I said, not even trying to hide my disgust.

“Not just the Empire, the Protectorate will too.” Did he really think I hadn’t thought of that? That I hadn’t considered the target I was putting on myself by doing this? I almost scoffed, but couldn’t stop my eyes from rolling.

He was losing a lot of blood and he hadn’t even tried to run away. I wondered for a moment if he was using his power for something, but I couldn’t feel anything different in my brain or limbs. To be safe I swapped again, this time to a me that was better suited at these kinds of conversations. After the swap there was a look of confusion on Victor’s face, I took that as an invitation to finish this.

“I don’t care,” I calmly spoke as I took the final steps towards him. “You’re a monster and so are the rest of you.”

I punctuated the statement with a headbutt stronger than any man should have been able to give and remain standing. Victor dropped like a sack of bricks, his hands splayed out at his sides, the blood flowing freely out from the wound in his chest. I waited a moment, taking in the sight of what I had done. I was sentencing this man to death, he was a monster, but still a person I was choosing to kill. I swapped again, this time to me, the real me, mentally at least.

I felt a sense of detachment from the actions I had taken, could I have done this without dipping into the mindset of a me that was more prone to violence? Would I have? I wasn’t quite sure the differences between those questions. I wanted this man dead. I wanted all Nazis dead.

Before I could let this feeling pave the way to a panic attack, I decided it was too late to worry. The man was going to die in minutes, all I had to do was leave.

So I left.

* * *

During the long walk across the now darkened city I swapped out my clothes for ones that didn’t have any blood on them. While doing this I pondered over the chef that lost his knife then suddenly had it again, but now covered in blood. Did reality bend to make it make sense to him, or was he left confused and disturbed by the sudden events? Again, cross dimensional bullshit, not worth worrying about.

I shifted again, throwing away the scars and blemishes of other versions of myself one at a time. No individual self of mine was different enough to hide my appearance, but overlapping differences on top of each other created a person that didn’t exist on Earth Bet. Eventually I felt my soft skin against the cold wind. It felt terrifying being myself again.

Did _I_ do this or was it the idea of another me? Did it matter? I still did it. Victor was dead, or soon would be. Victor being dead didn’t scare me though, it was the fact that I was capable of it. That I could reach out and stab a man in the ribs and watch the blood flow out and feel _happy_. I could feel my body warming up, not in a pleasant way though. It was becoming hard to stay focused on what was actually making me upset.

My train of thought was jumbled by a sudden buzzing in my pocket. Fuck, I brought back my phone too by mistake. I felt my hand go to it instantly even if the last thing I wanted to do was look. I glanced at my still lit up phone and saw the preview of a message starting with “I haven’t heard from you in awhile? I was hoping you would…” I didn’t need to see the rest of the message to know my mom wanted me to visit.

I shoved the phone back in my pocket without even unlocking it, not bothering to respond to her. I really didn’t want to get into any kind of conversation right now. Still, she probably deserved to see me, and if I went to see her now she wouldn’t start prodding me again for another week or so. With a new destination in mind and a steadying breath, I shoved my hands into a ‘straight out of the dryer’ hoodie pocket and began trudging through the bleak city streets.


	2. Mom

****

Mom

  
The steps up to the house were as immaculate as I remembered them being. There was a fine layer of dirt near flower beds that implied a level of care for the plants growing on the short path. I had never cared for gardening despite all the times my mom had tried to get me into it. She probably just wanted the free labor, but I guess that’s what kids are for.

I froze for a moment before knocking on the door. I could still leave without my mom ever knowing I’d been here, I’d left the text message unread. I didn’t really have anywhere else to be or anyone else to be with, but I always felt like I had to put on a mask to be at home. There was an Ethan from five years ago that I had to pull over my current self to hide my emotions.

I put that mask on and I knocked. I heard the steps from inside along with the barking of a dog I always forgot existed. Seconds later the door opened to reveal the short figure of my mom. Her once dark hair was now gray, adding to her image as a tired, old mother. She started to smile at my presence before reaching down and grabbing the collar of the husky now pushed up against the doorframe.

“Ethan! I wasn’t expecting you!” She said while pulling the large dog backwards and motioning for me to come inside. “It’s cold out there, come in and get warm.”

I put on a tight smile and stepped inside. As the door closed behind me I heard the lock turn and a dog now pushing up against the back of my knees. “Kyra! Give him some space!” my mom teased without any real fire to it. She knew I never had really liked dogs that much. The slobber and wet nose and fur meant I had to wash my hands after touching them. They were just way more work than they were worth.

“So! What did I do to earn your presence?” she joked while walking into the kitchen. I knew that she really did want to know why I was there. She was probing, wanting me to explain my reasoning for why tonight of all nights.

“I got your text,” I explained as monotone as possible. I reached down to pet Kyra to calm her down. To stop the incessant nosing.

“You didn’t need to rush over right away!” she lied. I knew that she was ecstatic that I had responded so quickly. “I was making something that I don’t think you’d like, unless your diet’s changed a lot since I last saw you.” It has changed, though not in the way she was thinking.

She didn’t tell me what she was making, instead wanting me to involve myself in the conversation. “What are you making?” I asked with no real interest while following her into the kitchen.

“Just stew. Beef and carrots and other stuff you don’t like,” she said in that joking tone again. It still wasn’t really a joke and it still wasn’t funny.

“I could have some, haven’t had dinner yet tonight.”

My mom put on a mock look of terror or surprise. “Ethan Hill is eating vegetables? The sky is falling!”

I pulled myself deeper into my performance, choosing not to comment further rather than push her on this topic. “I’m just hungry mom, when will it be ready?”

“Soon.”

I suppressed a sigh knowing soon could mean anywhere from five minutes to an hour. "I'm gonna run to the bathroom real quick."

I didn't wait for a response as I walked through the familiar house. I passed pictures of myself and my sister. Sometimes a picture of dad and mom together, looking happy. I stopped for a moment on a professional photo of myself from what felt like a lifetime ago. My eyes in the photo gave away my boredom over the whole ordeal, and my clearly ill fitting suit just added to the image of a high schooler that barely cared.

I continued on, entering the bathroom I had used for most of my childhood. I closed the door quietly but firmly behind me and grabbed hold of the sink on both sides. My now mop like hair dangled just on the edge of my view, but my eyes never drifted higher than the faucet. I don't know why I needed it, but I took a few deep breaths. My breathing didn't slow my mind’s rapid dive into nothingness. It felt like I was thinking about everything and nothing all at once.

After a few more breaths I found the will to look up at my reflection, my _true_ reflection. I’m not anything special, just an all around average, skinny white guy. Not very attractive or notable.

Sighing, I took my weight off the sink. I didn't feel much better, but I had to go back out at some point. I psyched myself up for small talk. Topics almost certainly would include my nonexistent job, my “wonderful sister in California”, and whatever politics she wanted to discuss. This would be tiring to say the least.

* * *

"I'm so glad you dropped by, we should do this more often!"

"Yeah."

"Since you liked the stew so much maybe I should see if you like any other vegetables."

"Sure." I gave a weak smile this time and moved in for an obligatory hug.

"Did you get taller? This is really late to be growing.”

Fuck. I must have swapped a little too much when I cleaned my hands earlier in the night. "Uh, it's prob just my shoes or my posture or something, haven't felt any growing pains."

"Mmm, well don't forget to get a haircut, you look like a bum like that."

"Yeah, I'll do that, next week. I've got stuff to do."

I pulled my mom into another hug. It felt almost clinical, no warmth, an action done from observation. I leaned down and pet the dog again so it would hopefully not try to follow me out.

"I'll hold her, you go on. I love you."

"Thanks mom."

I swung the door shut, not waiting for a response.

* * *

I don’t know where my mom thought I was going, maybe back to my nonexistent apartment. She thought I wasn’t doing well, but she also had no way to relate to what that meant. She didn’t understand that I hadn’t had the money to pay rent or buy food. I barely had the money to keep up my phone bill anymore and I’m pretty sure this was the last month I’d be able to pay for that.

When I was still living at home, my parents were always hyper focused on me doing well. Whatever I was doing was never enough, I could always be doing something more productive. They loved me, they wanted the world for me, but if I didn’t have the world then I was the one to blame.

Then I finished high school and I was supposed to go to college and get a degree in a STEM field. So I did that. I stayed under my parents’ wing and I got a degree in Biochemistry. I never really liked it that much, but it was part of my pre-med path planned for me since about second grade.

After that things just fell apart, I ran out of energy, out of patience, out of caring. Doing even the simplest task became nearly impossible, and I hated how my parents were right. If I had just been better I could have been a doctor instead of a homeless vigilante in one of the worst cities in America. If I had just tried harder I wouldn’t be walking around Brockton Bay at 2 AM just trying to bide my time until sunrise. If I had just been able to focus there would be carpet between my toes and a pillow under my head.

Now though, I didn’t need to sleep. I could just shunt away my exhaustion to another version of myself. Sleep was something I didn’t need anymore so I just chose not to. It was easier to be awake all the time rather than try to find a comfortable bench to sleep on.

I’m not sure how long I’d been awake, maybe a month. It was hard to tell when everything was just kinda the same every day. Walk, sit, walk, eat, sit, walk, drink, plan, walk. No schedule, just going where I chose, over and over again. I don’t need to eat either, but it still tasted good so I tried to eat every now and then. The days stretched and I grew bored until I decided to kill Victor, then the days became simpler. I had a purpose and maybe I could keep that purpose.

Maybe someday I’ll figure out what I want, what I need, to fill this yawning empty void. Until then, killing Nazis seemed like an acceptable distraction that ate at the endless boredom of eternal walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Keira for beta-ing :spop:

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you to Keira for beta-ing! :bulba:


End file.
